Okay, this may not be quite enough to make you rush out and find a tutor to each your child Hungarian, but sometimes knowing an obscure language has certain advantages. for instance, you can ignore the subtitles pasted on that obscure film that won the Palm D'bore medal at the Tegusigalpa International Film Festival. You can speak the language and totally confuse that poor dude who calls to sell you vinyl replacement windows. If you're with a date in Manhattan's upper East Side Yorkville neighborhood, you can impress her by translating that sign that says, "Magyar Hentes" (Hungarian Butcher), and innocently ask if she'd like to squeeze a little sausage.

If you were out at the US Open, you could also talk to Agnes Szavay, the Blonde Bomber from Budapest, who meets Svetlana Kuznetsova in the quarterfinals of the US Open tomorrow. Szavay  was a set up on Kuznetsova when she had to retire with a back injury in the New Haven final not quite two weeks ago, so a semifinal here is no outlandish idea.

It's been an eventful week-plus for Szavay. Her second-round match with Michaella Krajicek was scheduled for Court 4, 11 A.M., in the middle of last week. Both girls (who are friends and sometime double partners)  were out to the USTABJKNTC at around 7 AM, and they each had a warm up. Krajicek repaired to the locker room and Szavay went to double-check on their assignment, only to learn that the tournament referee had added "Not Before Four PM" to the schedule; the girls were all dressed up with no place to go - at least not for a solid seven hours.

"I went back to the locker room and went inside," Savay said, "I was laughing like crazy. Michaela was sitting there, all dressed up and ready to go. She said, 'What's so funny?' and I said, 'They changed the schedule without telling us. We're still first match - but after four!"

Then, before her fourth-round match with Julia Vakulenko, Szavay was told she couldn't go on court because of the sponsor logo on her visor. She also had to rush around, trying to find the chiropractor who has been working on her back since the New Haven event. It all worked out, though; Szavay dispatched Vakulenko in straights to set up her clash with Kuznetsova.

Szavay is part of a generation that has not been identified as such: her peers are Agnieszka Radwanska (who upset Maria Sharapova), Tina Paszek (who lost in the fourth rond to Anna Chakvetadze), Victoria Azarenka (who beat Hingis before losing in the fourth round to the Kuze), Michaella Krajicek and Nicole Vaidisova. "Nicole was right in there with the other girls, but she got so fast that she played fewer junior events," Szavay's coach, Zoltan Kuharsky, told me. "But she was definitely part of that group coming up."

So what we have folks, is a generation in search of an identity - a name. I'm open to suggestions, but for now I'll go for Generation Who(?) as in "Who's that Paszek girl?" The obscurity in which these girls labor undoubltedly has something to do with the preponderance of consonants in their names. And it's safe to say that while Radwanska is the hands-down Consonant Champ, Szavay is the least well-known of this unknown generation. 

These girls have been beating up on each other for years, and Szavay has given as good as she's gotten: in 2005,Szavay was upended in the Australian Girls' final by Azarekna (she was runner-up in the doubles as well), she won Roland Garros (singles and doubles), and lost at Wimbledon to Radwanska - but won the doubles. A solid WTA Tour result at Modena that summer  convinced Szavay to turn pro (she was 16 at the time), and when she lost in the main-draw qualifying for the US Open a few weeks later, she decided against sticking around to play the junior event. The decision may have cost her the ITF World Junior Champion title (Azarenka got that honor). Even so - Erik Siklos, a young guy who's already positioned himself as the Bud Collins of Hungarian tennis, tells me that Szavay would have been the ITF NO. 1 in singles - had the ITF not decided to count singles and doubles together in a cumulative official ranking.

No matter. All those girls are in the pros now, and suddenly Szavay is the one nearest the pace car, No. 15  Vaidisova. Szavay is No. 31, Radwanska 32, Krajicek  34, Azarenka 41 and Paszek 43. Man, if this were NASCAR, the vehicles would be flipping and the fireballs rising left and right!

Szavay's ranking is all the more impressive because of her recent history. In 2006,she lived - and played with - an undiagnosed case of mononucleosis. She was feeling depressed and getting her fanny tanned at every stop on the tour. Her ranking rode the Great Southern Highway, down to No. 290, by the time doctors figured out in June that she had Mono (my blood countrymen are better at tennis than medicine, I guess).

Given how easy it is to lose confidence and how hard it can be to regain it, Szavay may have been hit even harder in the mind than the body by the illness. Fortunately, it was at about this time that Kuharsky (who has coached Anke Huber and Ana Ivanovic) finally was free to work more closely with Szavay, a girl whom he had patronized and advised for many years.

He told me: "Nobody even noticed that Agnes was sick. For about six months (early in 2006) she wasa practicing, traveling, and losing - losing confidence and condition. She was feeling depressed. It was very, very tough on her emotionally, so in a way finding out that she had Mono was good news, because it explained all of her troubles. It was like a huge weight had been lifted off her chest."

During the first two months of their coaching relationship, Kuharsky says, he spent more time with Agnes in hospital rooms and clinics than on the practice court. About a year ago, she was barely able to walk up a flight of stairs, much less climb all those rungs on the rankings ladder. That she's been able to scamper back into the mix in such a short time is a testament to her resiliance, and that kind of flexibility is evident in her game as well.

"It's a strange way to put it, maybe, but in a way Agnes plays like a boy," Kuharsky says. "She's capable of doing lots of different things with spin and pace, and that's something you don't see that much on the women's tour."

Kuharsky believes that the propellant for Szavay's recent, fine results (coming into the US Open, she was in the final of her two previous events; she won Palermo and retired with back trouble in New Haven) has been a combination of increased maturity and a growth-spurt in her game. She worked through the divorce of her parents (her father works for a paint manufacturer), a change of managers, and an unsettled coaching situation (Kuharsky is officially her co-coach, with Jozsef Bolskay). All of which as had a settling effect on her.

Szavay has a terrific two-handed backhand that she hits with both pace and accuracy, and a penetrating serve that lacks only a slightly higher degree of consistency. Her forehand, once her weakest shot, has gotten much better, giving her a ground game that is very versatile (because her "feel" is so good) and difficult to attack. This is a girl who can think as well as simply blast her way to a W  - and in that, she certainly is a contrast to Generation's most well-known entity, Vaidisova.

With her blonde-verging-on-platinum hair (all natural, thank you very much!), sharply etched features and fair skin, Szavay cuts an attractive figure. And she is among the elite girls who don't wear all that cheesy off-the-rack Nike and Adidas gear; Szavay's tennis dresses are one-off unique creations of Marta Makany, a Budapest fashionista and designer.

Szavay has yet to play on Arthur Ashe, and she's looking forward to doing so for a reason that may not be obvious."I hope they give me a (US Open souvenir) towel. They haven't given me one yet, and I really want one.They give you towels at all the Grand Slams no matter what court you're on. But here, you don't even get one for being on Louis Armstrong. Just Ashe."

Oh those Generation Who kids, if it isn't one fad it's another!